Is Northern Ireland ready to take advantage of social media in 2012?
Tim McKane, Director of digital marketing company Navajotalk.com, highlights the importance of social media for companies in Northern Ireland in 2012.
2012 – A Big Year for Northern Ireland – are you ready to take advantage?
The year has changed, and so has the world. In 2011 Belfast hosted the MTV EMAs which were broadcast across the world, but that is only a small part of the story.
Justin Beiber was tweeting his 16,148,196 followers sharing what a great time he was having in Belfast, Selena Gomez was sending photos from Belfast city centre to her 9,440,992 Twitter fans, and Lady Gaga was tweeting her 17,709,517 ‘little monsters’ live from Belfast.
All around the world people were hearing about Belfast; young people who have not grown up seeing Northern Ireland on their news screens, people who will respond when we say we are from Belfast – “that’s cool – that’s where the MTV EMAs were held!”.
Opportunities to promote Northern Ireland are going to come thick and fast throughout 2012, and the social media channels will be a major source of news.
Here are some numbers...
The 1997 Titanic movie, directed by James Cameron, has a Facebook page. Guess how many people have liked it? 11,967,072 (at the time of writing). That means 11,967,072 people have indicated an interest, through social media, in the Titanic.
Will they be interested in coming to the new Titanic Belfast visitor centre this year, next year or sometime in the future?
Titanic Stories, the website, has 102,487 likes on Facebook, and as of January 6th at 11.10AM, 5,469 people were talking about the page on Facebook. The Titanic movie has 26,927 followers on Twitter.
The Irish Open is coming to Royal Portrush. It will be promoted by Rory, Darren and Graeme. When Rory McIlroy sends out a Tweet, it will automatically be sent the news feeds of 769,847 Twitter users. Darren Clarke’s Tweets appear on the news feeds of 120,885 people and Graeme McDowell’s Tweets automatically reach 276,186 people. In addition, Ian Poulter may well be adding to this by Tweeting the joys of golf on the North Coast to his 1,234,678 followers.
So how can this help you?
Well, if you are on Twitter or Facebook you can comment on these pages, talk about being in Northern Ireland, ask people in for a cup of tea (just make sure you’ve got plenty of tea bags!), share your favourite Titanic or golf stories. Join in the promotion of our homeland.
Social media will be at the heart of the activity. People who have friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter will be sending out photographs, talking about where they have been, people they have met, pubs they have enjoyed, and pints they have savoured.
Social media is here, it can help your business, and it’s ready to tell people a new and fresh set of stories in 2012.
Tim McKane is Director of Navajo Talk and can be contacted at navajotalk.com
Tim can also be contacted via Twitter - @TimMcKane